Dubai $41.7 Billion Record

Dubai has posted an all-time high in both value and volume for its diamond trade in 2025 — the first time the emirate has achieved records on both measures simultaneously.

Total imports and exports rose 16% to $41.7 billion, from $35.8 billion in 2024, according to the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC). Volume climbed 43% to 359.5 million carats. The previous value record dated to 2011, at $40.9 billion — a peak that stood for fourteen years and has now been surpassed.

DMCC CEO Ahmed Bin Sulayem framed it as strategic vindication:

Set against the numbers coming out of the rest of the industry this year, that is a genuinely arresting result. De Beers is heading into negative EBITDA. Swiss watch exports are flat at the half. And Dubai just broke a fourteen-year record.

Start with the internal arithmetic, because it tells you what kind of record this is.

Volume grew nearly three times as fast as value. Divide one by the other and the average value per carat fell — roughly 19% on a blended basis. Dubai handled dramatically more carats in 2025 and collected proportionally less money per carat.

That is the same shape as the De Beers data: volume outrunning value. It is not a contradiction of the record; it is the composition of it.

Two forces explain the gap, and they are both visible in the DMCC's own disclosure:

That second figure is the most consequential number in the release, and it explains most of the volume-value divergence on its own.

Put those two facts side by side and the picture sharpens considerably:

Roughly 140 million carats — nearly two fifths of everything Dubai handled — generated approximately 4% of the value.

This is the arithmetic of the lab-grown era stated with unusual clarity. Synthetic production is scalable, its wholesale prices have collapsed, and the carats are effectively free to manufacture relative to mined equivalents. They generate logistics volume, customs throughput, and handling activity — but very little value.

Note how the DMCC handles this. It states plainly that "natural diamonds remain the Dubai diamond market's economic foundation and continue to drive its growth," and it leads with the $39.9 billion / 96% natural figure. The 39% synthetic volume share appears last, without a value attached.

That is accurate positioning, not spin. A trading hub's economic relevance is measured in value, not tonnage. Dubai's business is natural diamonds; synthetics are throughput.

But the 43% volume growth headline is materially inflated by a category contributing almost nothing economically. Anyone reading "volume up 43%" as evidence of market strength is reading the wrong metric.

Buried in the middle of the release is the statistic that actually demonstrates structural transformation:

An eight-to-nine-fold increase in value per carat over five years is not market growth. Markets do not do that. That is a change in what kind of business Dubai is doing.

A hub whose average polished value per carat rises by a factor of eight or nine in five years has moved from handling commercial goods to handling high-value goods. Small, low-quality, mass-market polished has been progressively displaced in the mix by larger, better, and more expensive stones.

This is the single most important claim in the DMCC release, because it addresses the perennial criticism of Dubai — that it was a transit point rather than a trading centre, a place goods passed through rather than a place where value was created and captured.

An eight-fold rise in per-carat value is inconsistent with pure transit economics. Transit hubs handle whatever moves. Trading centres attract goods that require financing, expertise, buyers, and confidence — and high-value polished only flows where those exist.

Consider what happened to the natural diamond market between 2020 and 2025:

Dubai grew polished trade value 246% through that period. That growth was not carried by the market; it was taken from somewhere else.

The DMCC notes the figures "reflect a wider shift in the global diamond trade," with Dubai's trade up 63% in value and 44% in volume over the past ten years.

"Wider shift" is doing significant work in that sentence. In a market where global natural diamond value has not grown over the decade, a hub growing 63% in value is taking share, not riding a tide.

The plausible sources:

The historic centre of the rough trade, and the most obvious donor. Antwerp's rough volumes have declined structurally over two decades, with cost base, regulatory burden, and the gravitational pull of Indian manufacturing all working against it. Dubai's geographic position between African production and Indian cutting is simply more efficient for rough logistics.

The most sensitive factor, and one the DMCC does not address. Following sanctions and G7 restrictions on Russian-origin diamonds, trade flows reorganized substantially. The UAE is not party to those restrictions. Some portion of the redirected volume has plausibly moved through Dubai — and the timing of the volume surge is consistent with that reorganization.

This is the aspect of Dubai's growth that draws the most external scrutiny, and it sits directly in tension with Bin Sulayem's emphasis on a "transparent" ecosystem. The DMCC has invested in KYC frameworks and compliance infrastructure precisely because this question is asked, and it will keep being asked.

Under maximum tariff pressure in the current US environment — 12.5% stacked on legacy Section 301 duties. Its historical value proposition was frictionless trans-shipment, and stacked duties are the opposite. Trading and hub functions have been migrating out, and Dubai is a natural beneficiary.

Dubai's advantages are real and durable regardless of the sanctions question:

Rough led the growth. Two readings, both partially true:

Reading one — logistics dominance. Dubai has become the default routing point for African rough heading to Indian cutting factories. Botswana, Angola, DRC, Zimbabwe and Namibian goods increasingly transit or trade through Dubai rather than Antwerp. This is efficiency, and it is defensible.

Reading two — a soft rough market moves cheap. 2025 was a poor year for rough pricing. De Beers conducted cut-price inventory sales. When rough is cheap and abundant, carats move — and a hub records the throughput. Some of the 34% volume gain reflects a buyer's market, not a strong one.

Note that rough volume was the second-highest on record, not the highest, while total volume set a record. The gap is filled by synthetics and industrials.

$1.1 billion, up 48% — an all-time high, with imports +69% and exports +34%.

Small relative to $41.7bn total, but strategically significant for three reasons:

The timing is also favourable. Thailand faces 12.5% US tariffs under the Section 301 forced-labor action, and Colombia the same. Dubai has no such exposure. As colored stone chains reorganize around tariff geography, a neutral, well-connected hub with a growing inventory position is well placed.

Place the three data sets from this reporting period side by side:

The pattern is consistent and it is not about the market. All three show volume outrunning value, and all three show strength concentrated at the high end. The difference is positional:

That is the structural insight. A trading hub can post record results in a bad market, because volatility and volume are its raw material. Dubai's 2025 record is not evidence that the diamond market is healthy. It is evidence that Dubai has positioned itself to profit regardless.

Dubai has broken a fourteen-year-old record in the worst natural diamond market in a generation. That is the fact worth sitting with.

$41.7 billion, up 16%. 359.5 million carats, up 43%. The first simultaneous record in both value and volume. Set against De Beers heading into negative EBITDA and Swiss watch exports flat at the half, it looks almost like a different industry.

It isn't. It is a different position in the same industry. Producers own price risk. Manufacturers own demand risk. Hubs own flow — and flow rose in 2025 precisely because goods were cheap, abundant, and reorganizing around new tariff and sanctions geography.

Read the numbers honestly and two things are true at once. The volume record is substantially hollow — roughly 39% of carats are synthetics and industrials contributing about 4% of value, and the blended value per carat fell around 19%. But the polished figure is not hollow at all: $18.7 billion, up 25% in a year, up 246% since 2020, with average value per carat up eight to nine times. You cannot manufacture that with transit volume. That is buyers, financing, and confidence.

Bin Sulayem's claim of a "connected, transparent, and efficient precious-stones ecosystem" is two-thirds demonstrated by these figures. Connected and efficient are evident in the numbers. Transparent is the word that will keep drawing scrutiny — from G7 provenance requirements, from traceability regimes, and from an industry increasingly required to document exactly where every stone came from.

The competitive threat, meanwhile, is not another hub's ambition. It is a tariff schedule. Antwerp now enjoys a US duty exemption on natural diamonds that Dubai does not. In a market where origin has become a duty determinant, the world's most efficient logistics position can still be undercut by a customs annex.